


You're The Reason I Keep Breathing

by sunsetmog



Category: One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: M/M, Not a Band AU, boys being stupid, failing to communicate, radio co-hosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 11:43:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2771762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsetmog/pseuds/sunsetmog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For this prompt: Harry and Nick both work for Radio 1 as co-hosts, and are actually secretly pathetically in love with each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're The Reason I Keep Breathing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spacesbetweenseconds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacesbetweenseconds/gifts).



> spacesbetweenseconds, I'm sorry Louis wasn't in this, I couldn't find a way to put him in when it's so tightly Nick's POV. I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. <3
> 
> Thanks to my beta for her last minute, extremely speedy turnaround. If there are any mistakes left, they're all down to me. :)

_Now_

"Is that that boy again?" Nick's dad asks, when Nick's phone goes off for the seventeenth time in a row. 

Nick makes a show of rolling his eyes. "Might be," he says, but for the sake of family unity, he ignores it until he's had his turn at Monopoly. He fails (again) at buying anything and ends up paying rent to his mum for Pall Mall. So far this game he's managed to buy Old Kent Road and go to jail. He nudges his phone onto silent for a bit. 

"You only saw him this morning."

"He's probably out," Nick says. "He can't have a drink without telling the world about it." 

He sees Jane exchange a look with his mum. He avoids their eyes. He's not ignoring Harry. It's impossible to ignore Harry.

"How is he?" his mum asks. 

"Same as he always is," Nick says, studiously concentrating on the multipack of tiny biscuits from Aldi. "Are them the cheesy ones? I don't want a tomato one by accident."

"Those are the tomato ones." Jane points at the section at the end. "So, uh, Harry."

"What about him?" Nick schools his face into something that he hopes appears unconcerned. 

"Well," his mum says. "Is there any reason why you've decided to rush half way up the country on no notice? Not that we're not pleased to see you, obviously."

"Obviously." Nick shrugs a little awkwardly. "It's nothing."

"That's my favourite kind of gossip," Jane says, tucking her feet up under herself. "Tell us everything about nothing."

Nick makes a face. "It really is nothing," he says. "Who wants a cup of tea?"

In the kitchen, he puts the kettle on to boil, and refuses to give in to the despair that's etched across his skin. 

_Then_

"Coming up on the show today—what have we got coming up, Hazza?"

"No idea," Harry says, adjusting his headphones. "We had a production meeting twenty minutes ago but Nick just spent the whole time talking about his new floor, so I've got no idea what's coming up. Don't think any of us do, to be honest."

"Oi," Nick says. "My new floor is very important. Or, as my mum asked when I told her I was having one put in, a _pelvic_ floor? Thanks, Mum. Eileen's on form again, Harold."

"Eileen's always on form." Harry grins at him over the desk. "How are you feeling today, Grimmy? I'm feeling good."

"Shut up, just because you're a magical human being who doesn't get hangovers."

"I do, just not today."

"For the record," Nick says, leaning in to the mic, "that last bit is a lie." Even after the Brits, when they'd partied straight through to their show and then done the whole three and a half hours dying on the inside—and on the outside—Harry's hangover had been approximately ten thousand times better than Nick's. 

"Grimmy, oi," Harry says, trying to kick him under the table. "Anyway, we're going to play the Arctic Monkeys now."

"Yep, and when we come back, we'll tell you exactly what we've got coming up on the Nick and Harry Breakfast Show, because we'd quite like to keep our jobs."

"You're the one going on about your new floor."

"It's going to be an amazing floor," Nick says, and then he presses play on the Arctic Monkeys, and takes his headphones off. "We're terrible at this," he says. "Who the fuck thought putting me and you together was going to be a good idea?"

"No idea," Harry says, with a grin. He catches Nick's ankle in between his feet. It's the kind of affection Nick expects from his dog. There's an extremely fond, deep appreciation rooted in his chest where Harry's concerned. The listeners seem to like it, too. "Hey, so what are you going to do when they're laying your floor?"

Nick shrugs. "Not sure. I've got a whole twenty-four hours to sort that out."

Harry rolls his eyes. "You can stay at mine, if you want."

"Oh, Harold. You're a generous soul."

"You were going to just turn up on my doorstep though, weren't you?"

Nick shrugs again. "Might have done," he says, and over Harry's shoulder, Fiona and Matt make a huge deal of pretending to throw up. 

Whatever anyone says, he and Harry aren't in love. That's just stupid. 

\--//--

"Don't touch that, I'm taking a picture," Harry says, batting Nick's hand out of the way. The drinks menu for this hipster bar they're in in Shoreditch is a rolled up piece of aged paper in a bottle in the middle of the table. One of the cocktails has prune juice as a main ingredient. 

"I want a drink," Nick complains. "But not the prune one."

"It's good to be regular," Harry says, tucking his foot round Nick's under the table. This is bar three of the evening, and Nick is only putting up with the fact that there are another two bars on the schedule because Aimee is one of his best friends, and she gets a free pass because it's her birthday. "What do you want to drink? I'll get them."

Nick picks up the bottle and tries to figure out what's in each of the drinks. It's difficult because he's had a few drinks already, and he has to turn the bottle to read the ingredients, and half the ingredients are left in the fold of the paper anyway. "That one," he says, pointing at the Macuá. There are a couple of girls at the bar trying to surreptitiously take pictures of him and Harry. Nick always prefers it when they just come up and ask. It smacks of being spied on when it's like this. 

"One or two?"

"Two," Nick says, already getting his phone out. His Instagram feed will just be weird, hipster pictures that Harry's taken; he can't be trusted on a night out not to document every weird thing he's seen. So far tonight there's been a wonky curtain rail, two sad bottles of Sol catching the sunlight through the pub window, a limp cocktail umbrella, a puppy wearing a bowler hat, and a cyclist in full Elizabethan dress. All Nick's posted so far is a video of Aimee wearing a crown whilst doing the Vogue dance. 

He refreshes his Twitter feed. Harry has literally just posted another picture—whilst he's waiting at the bar, no less—and the caption just says _twinsies_. It's a picture of Nick's feet and Harry's feet, and their matching trainers. Nick hadn't even noticed him taking it. He retweets it and then puts his phone down on the table. Harry's leaning over the bar, chatting to the barman as he makes them their drinks. 

Nick doesn't look at Harry's arse. 

He spends most of his life not looking at Harry's arse. The rest of the time he works on not showing how topsy-turvy he is on the inside whenever Harry smiles at him. Because the thing is, regardless of what the newspapers and the internet and their friends say, he and Harry really are just friends. They're colleagues and co-hosts and best friends, but they're not anything else. Harry isn't even out. He's not exactly in, either, but unlike Nick, he's never given an interview confirming who it is he likes to take to bed. 

Nick rather suspects that's because the answer is "everyone", because Harry doesn't seem to discriminate when it comes to the people he kisses. 

The only person he doesn't kiss is Nick, and Nick's fairly sure that's a sign, regardless of what his friends say. 

"How's the boyfriend?" Aimee asks, dropping down onto the seat next to him. He's fairly sure that these used to be church pews. 

"Not my boyfriend," Nick says. "How's your boyfriend?"

Aimee waggles her hand at him. There's a huge, plastic, glittery ring on her left hand. "Do you like my pound shop ring?"

"I love it," Nick says. "Does this mean you're having a pound shop wedding?"

"It would be magnificent," she says. "Seriously, though. Why don't you just tell him? Take the bull by the horns."

"Nah." Nick shakes his head. "Harry kisses everybody. If he's not kissing me, it's for a reason."

Aimee rolls her eyes. "You're a giant fucking coward sometimes."

He smiles. "Yeah, yeah. Or maybe I just don't want to fuck up a good thing."

"And to think," she says, "you went off on one when they put you together."

"Never happened," Nick says, as Harry starts to make his way back from the bar. "Liar."

She elbows him in the side. "Tell him," she says, before standing up to let Harry sit down. He kisses her on the cheek, and she kisses him back. 

He doesn't kiss Nick. He never fucking kisses Nick. 

Aimee raises her eyebrows at him, but Nick ignores her. He takes a big gulp of his drink. 

"I got you the prune one," Harry says, laughing, and Nick groans. 

\--//--

That night, Nick stumbles into Harry's spare bedroom, and lands face first on the bed. 

"Move over," Harry says, coming in after him equally drunk, and poking Nick in the leg.

"You've got your own bed," Nick says, but he obediently moves so that they can pull the duvet out from under them, and Harry can sprawl out on the sheets next to him. "Stop taking mine."

"Shhhhhh," Harry says. "Sleepy."

"Fine," Nick says, pulling the duvet up over them both. They don't kiss. They never kiss. 

Nick thinks about kissing him all the fucking time. 

\--//--

In the morning, he wakes up with Harry wrapped around him like a leech, breathing stale alcohol breath all over Nick's neck. Nick's hugging him back. It's not unusual.

They get up, and Harry puts the coffee on, and they stumble into work with a view of the sun rising out of the window of the car Radio 1's sent for them. When Harry smiles at him, sleepy and a bit hungover, love takes root in Nick's chest, painful and needy. 

"You all right?" Harry asks. 

"Yeah," Nick lies. "Nothing a bacon sandwich can't fix."

"Get me one too," Harry says, and he rests his cheek against Nick's shoulder. 

Nick wraps an arm around him and keeps looking out of the window.

\--//--

"Guess what day it is?" Nick says, a few weeks later.

Harry rolls his eyes. "Nicholas."

"That's right," Nick says, "it's the anniversary of our very own Harry Styles' X Factor audition. Remember that, listeners? Our very own baby Harry Styles. And in honour of that momentous occasion, let's have a listen to Harry's beautiful cover of _Isn't She Lovely_."

"Oh no," Harry says. "Nicholas."

"Put the radio on loud for this, I think. And imagine how different our worlds could have been if he'd actually won. No Harry and Nick Breakfast Show."

"This is embarrassing," Harry says. 

"No it's not. Oh, look, your mum's texted me. Hi, Anne. She's ready to sing along."

"I'm disowning all of you."

"Sing along, Haz. Put some effort into it, there's a good chap."

If Harry rolls his eyes and then starts singing along, then Nick's practiced hiding the way it makes him feel. He's good at it by now. 

"Just think," Harry says, after the song's over, and the texts have started rolling in. "I heard recently that they were thinking of putting us into a band at boot camp."

"Who?"

"Me and some other lads," Harry says. "Pretty sick, right?"

"Absolutely," Nick agrees. "But if you'd been in a band, you might never have got to present Xtra Factor."

"And I did love Xtra Factor," Harry says. He kicks Nick in the ankle. Harry had had an extremely high profile relationship with Caroline Flack whilst presenting Xtra Factor. It was partly how Harry and Nick had become friends, Caroline in the middle introducing them both. By the time Harry had done a year on Xtra Factor, he was a celebrity in his own right, and Radio 1 had wanted a piece of it. He'd turned out to be a magically awkward radio presence, and he'd been here ever since.

"Well, next up, we have Harry's songs from boot camp, and from the live shows weeks ten, nine and eight—before sadly, our Hazza was sent home with his tail between his legs."

"Haven't we got an actual playlist to play?"

"We have, but we've made special allowances in honour of this special day."

"I vote the actual playlist," Harry says loudly. He doesn't do much fiddling with the actual tech stuff, because very occasionally he'll be responsible for playing out of date jingles or cutting off songs in favour of putting the voice effects on Nick when he's having a cup of tea, but together they made a good team. "Let me play something we're supposed to be playing."

Nick reaches over and covers Harry's hand with his own. "Next up, Harry Styles singing _Stop Crying Your Heart Out_."

Harry stills beneath his touch. Nick pretends not to notice. Their production team take pictures on their phones, because they notice. They notice everything, even the things that aren't there. 

Their friends are terrible. 

\--//--

Aimee sends him a weblink in an email. It takes Nick to a page that says at the top, _1-20 of 356 Works in Nick Grimshaw/Harry Styles_. The first story is called **You're The Reason I Keep Breathing** and it has a summary that reads: _Nick Grimshaw is in love with Harry Styles. Everyone knows it, but Harry Styles has a secret. He's the son of a Mafia Warlord, and if he loves Nick back, then something terribly might happen to the man he loves. Can they keep their feelings hidden? And what happens when Nick is shot? Will Harry give it all up for the man of his dreams??? Contains rimming and sex toys and bad lube choices._

Nick doesn't mean to read it, but he does anyway. At the end, they live in a cottage by the sea and Harry grows yellow roses and leaves petals on Nick's pillow. It seems an odd choice for a mafia warlord in the making, but Nick goes with it because there's a three thousand word section where the writer details exactly how Nick rims Harry for the first time, and Nick doesn't mean to have an in-real-life wank, but he can't quite help himself. 

Aimee sends him a text after a while that says, _DID YOU READ ANY???? WHAT ABOUT THE ONE WHERE YOU'RE A LIBRARIAN AND HE HELPS IN THE VILLAGE SHOP AND MAKES JAM._

Nick sends her one back that just says, _I hate you._

_But you love him._

_Only a little bit_ , he texts back. _Not enough that it matters_. 

It's a lie, but it's not a problem, because it's never going to happen. 

\--//--

"I'm having my living room repainted, and I hate the smell of paint," Harry says, as soon as Nick picks up the phone. 

"Hello to you too," Nick says. "Couldn't you have said this, like, an hour ago? When we were at work? It's not, like, a surprise living room repainting, is it?"

"Didn't know I hated it this much when I was at work. My house smells. They've only done the undercoat on one wall so far."

Nick rolls his eyes. "Do you want to come over?"

"I'm actually outside. Come and let me in."

"You're terrible," Nick says, but he's smiling. He's knackered, and he was just about to have a nanna nap on the sofa in front of the telly, but he goes to let Harry in anyway. Harry has an overnight bag, a satchel, and a Waitrose bag, so it looks like he's here for the duration. "Are you staying?"

"If you'll have me." Harry's eyes seem bright. "What are you up to?"

"Watching telly," Nick says. "I'm knackered."

"Okay. Do you want coffee?"

"Always," Nick says, and he goes to lie back down on his sofa, his dog curling up against his chest. 

He's asleep even before Harry's brought the coffee in. 

\--//--

He wakes up to nine million messages on his phone, and a single tweet from Harry. It's a picture of Nick asleep on his sofa, his dog asleep too, and a blanket over them both. Harry's written _sleepy times xxxx_ underneath. 

He hadn't fallen asleep under a blanket. 

Nick's heart pounds. He doesn't say anything, and puts his phone on silent.

\--//--

Harry cooks that night, noodles and prawns and vegetables and a sweet chilli sauce. He's even brought wine, and they sit at Nick's table in the conservatory with the big light off and the lamps on, and Harry's phone playing _A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night_. Nick remembers it from family dinners growing up. Harry must have remembered him saying it once, because it feels like he's downloaded it especially. 

"This is nice," Nick says. 

Harry smiles at him over a forkful of noodles. "It was meant to be," he says. "We don't often get to, like, hang out when we haven't got anything to do, or anywhere to be."

He's right, although that's partly down to Nick engineering it that way. 

"Anyway," Harry goes on. "You're putting me up. The least I can do is provide food."

"Thanks," Nick says, a trifle disconcerted. There's something in the way that Harry's looking at him tonight, a set to his jaw, a shine in his eye. For once it feels like there's the smallest possibility that Harry might want to kiss him back, and he can't countenance that possibility. He can't. "You don't want to go out, or anything?"

Harry shakes his head. "No," he says. "I don't."

Nick looks down at his plate. "Okay. All right. We'll stay in."

\--//-- 

They spend the evening watching television, Nick with his legs sprawled out across Harry's lap, the dog curled up between the two of them. Nick is trying to keep it as normal and as friendly as he can, but it's hard. He wants more; he's always wanted more. 

To get Harry back for the sleeping picture, he tweets a picture of their legs intertwined on the sofa, with the caption, _quite nice really_. 

Harry glances at him later on, scrolling through his Twitter feed. His expression's inscrutable. 

He retweets it nonetheless. 

"Do you want the sofa tonight?" Nick asks later. "Or you can share with me."

Harry rolls his eyes. "When have I ever wanted the sofa?"

It's a good point. Nick stays up later than he meant to because he doesn't know how to deal with sharing a bed with Harry tonight. Harry who's quieter than normal, whose expression says something tentative and possible. 

"Come on," Harry says finally. "We'll never wake up in the morning if we don't go to bed." Harry's never bothered going to bed early before. 

Nick waits a long moment before he nods. 

\--//--

He doesn't think he'll sleep, but he passes out almost as soon as he gets into bed.

\--//--

When he wakes up, Harry's pressed close to him, hugging him. 

Nick tips his head back on the pillow and stares up at the ceiling. He's woken up before his alarm for once; twenty minutes isn't long enough to go back to sleep and it's too early to get up. He stays where he is, wrapped up in Harry's embrace, too hot and too turned on to move. He's hard. 

He can't help but brush Harry's hair away from his face. 

Harry's eyes flutter open. He comes to slowly. 

"Morning," he says softly. His voice is a bit gruff. 

"Morning," Nick says, and Harry shifts a little bit, but doesn't let him go. 

The moment Harry realises that Nick's hard is etched on Nick's brain. It's a slight widening of his eyes, his mouth opening a little into an o. 

"It's like—" Nick starts, and he tries to pull away, but Harry's arms are locked around him. "Sorry. It's morning, I just—"

Harry shifts so that his dick is pressed up against Nick's thigh. He's hard too. 

"Harry."

Harry doesn't say anything, but he doesn't move away either. 

"God." Nick closes his eyes. Harry isn't letting him go. He's hard against Nick's thigh, and he isn't letting him go, and last night he made him dinner, and in the early morning, Nick is weak. He's so weak in the face of Harry Styles. "God, Harry."

With a trembling hand, Nick brushes Harry's hair away from his face again. 

Harry still doesn't let him go. 

He doesn't pull away even as they're leaning in, even when Nick's touching his mouth to Harry's. 

Even as Nick's kissing him, and Harry's kissing back. 

Harry slides a hand into Nick's hair, and Nick kisses him awake, his knee in between Harry's legs. 

He kisses him until the alarm on his phone starts to go off. 

Nick rolls away to snooze his alarm, and when he rolls back over, Harry's got out of bed. He's standing by Nick's window, still hard. He wraps his arms around himself.

 _Oh_ , Nick thinks. He leans back on his elbows. 

"We should get ready for work," Harry says, his throat working. "We'll be late."

"Right," Nick says. "Do you want first shower?"

Harry nods. 

A minute later, Nick can hear the shower going. So this is what this feels like. 

\--//-- 

The show's bad. Harry keeps looking at a spot about two inches to the right of Nick's head. 

_I fucked it up, I fucked it up, I fucked it up_ runs on a constant ticker tape inside of Nick's head. 

By the time it gets to the nine-thirty news, even Fiona and Matt and Ian have noticed, and Ian's obviously notified Aimee, because she's texting too. 

Nick texts his mum. _I'm coming home this afternoon for the weekend, sorry it's last minute xx_

It'll be easier than staying here. Harry rushes off at the end of the show, and Nick goes home and packs a bag. By the afternoon he's eighty miles from London, and just coming off the M1 to join the M6. Harry's sent him six text messages. 

He's too scared to read them. 

 

_Now_

Jane comes to find him in the kitchen. "What's up?" she says. "You and Harry had a bust up, or what? Normally you're surgically attached to that phone."

"Bad life choice," Nick says. "Just ignoring it until it goes away."

He spoons Nescafe into a mug for his mum and Jane, and makes a cup of tea for his dad. 

"What kind of bad life choice?" Jane asks, leaning against the fridge so he can't get to the milk for his mum and dad's drinks. "It's about Harry, right?"

"It's not always about Harry," Nick says. 

"Mostly is, though. Seeing as though you're in love with each other and everything."

Nick doesn't know why people keep saying that. "He doesn't love me," Nick says. "And it doesn't matter how I feel, all right? Because the important bit is the bit where he doesn't love me back. He'll love every other fucking person in the place but me, all right? I don't know why I ever hoped it would be anything different."

His eyes blur. He blinks the tears away, and motions Jane out of the way so that he can get to the fridge. 

"What happened?" Jane asks softly. 

"I kissed him and now he won't even look at me. I knew it was a bad fucking idea."

"Language, Nicholas," his mum calls from the living room. 

Nick at least manages a smile at that. "She's still got ears like a hawk."

"I heard that."

Jane rubs his arm. "Have you tried talking to him? Because the whole world knows how he looks at you."

"I don't," Nick says. "I don't know how he looks at me. I know how he looks at everyone else when he goes home with them. I know how he flirts with the guests and they love it. I know all of that. I know how he doesn't kiss me, and he doesn't take me home, and now I know how he doesn't look at me when I accidentally kiss him, and I'm sick of people telling me how he feels about me, because it's not fucking true, all right? It's not fucking true." He puts the milk down on the side. "He doesn't want me, and it makes it a million times harder to be in love with him when every single person is telling me that he wants me back, when I know he doesn't."

"Oh, love." 

"See, Janey? It's a mess."

She smiles at him. It looks sad. "He's your best friend. He's not going to ruin that for the sake of one kiss he didn't want."

That's all he's wanted for so long. Someone to acknowledge the fact that Harry didn't want him back. He just hadn't expected it to hurt so much. 

"I wish he loved me back," he says. "I really, really wish he loved me back."

\--//--

He manages three and a half hours sleep that night, which he counts as a success considering he's drowning in his own misery. He's not entirely happy with Jane waking him up at eight thirty in the morning, but as she's brandishing her laptop, Nick's not entirely sure he's not still dreaming. 

"It's Saturday," he says. 

"Shut up, Mr he doesn't love me back." She puts the laptop down on his bed. It's open to Harry's Twitter account. His bio says, _I love music. So does the other guy._

"What am I looking at?"

Jane points at the screen. 

**@harry_styles** 8h  
messed something up with someone I love

 **@harry_styles** 6h  
this used to be full

 **@harry_styles** 5h  
forgot my key

 **@harry_styles** 3h  
cant sleep

"I told you," Nick says. "He goes out for a drink and he spends every second minute telling the world about it. It's not a big deal."

"He's drunk and sad and he's 'messed something up with someone I love'. I follow him on twitter, Nick. He's usually posting fifteen pictures of cracked windowpanes and some stupid pun about McDonald's bouncers."

"McDoormen. That's not a pun, it's a terrible attempt at being funny. Because he's terrible."

"Stop being a dickhead," Jane says. She drops his phone onto his bed. "He's your best friend, you could at least check your messages. Even if he doesn't love you back, it's not his fault. Stop being a knob. I'll go and make you a coffee." 

She stomps all the way down the stairs. 

Nick takes all of his courage into his hands, and unlocks his phone. There's a message from Aimee. It just says, _care to explain why I've got a drunk crying harry styles on my sofa at three in the morning_

He texts back _no_. 

Then he relents. _Why did he end up at yours?_

_Because you've apparently run away and he was staying at yours. What the fuck happened? he was so drunk he cried._

Nick's hand shakes. He opens up the messages from Harry. There are loads of them. He keeps scrolling up until he gets to one from before Harry had come to stay, a perfectly normal _saw these sausages in sainsburys and they look like a hand_. He starts to scroll down. 

_Are you alright_  
 _I'm really sorry about earlier_  
 _Should never have done it_  
 _Should never have kissed you_  
 _I'm sorry_

The messages after that get progressively drunker. 

_Didn’t mean to ruin things_  
 _Nevr want to runi thing_  
 _Know you don’t want o bei ith m me_  
 _Know this morning was a misathemisktae mistake_  
 _Cant get into your flat_  
 _Realy drunk_  
 _Kets are in there to my house_  
 _Drank all fionas tequila_  
 _Don’t think sehs miy friend anymore_  
 _Msut buy her more tequila_

Nick looks down at his phone for a long time before he texts back, _you didn't kiss me, I kissed you. and it was me that messed things up by wanting it so much. Not you._

He doesn't get a reply, and he locks his phone and goes downstairs to have some coffee. 

\--//--

He's still in his pyjamas at eight minutes past four in the afternoon, still in his old ratty dressing gown, on his sixth cup of coffee and he's stuck watching endless musical versions of Cinderella because his mum's doing the ironing and this has always been her tried and tested way of getting Nick off the sofa. It doesn't work this time, not even when the doorbell goes. 

"Can I at least pretend you're ill?" his mum asks. "I can't be bringing people in here when you look like you're consumptive."

"Tell them I've got tuberculosis," Nick says. "Or something where I'm going to die of misery."

"You always were a giant hypochondriac when you're tired," she says, going out to answer the door. She comes back a minute later. "Visitor for you," she says. "I'll put the kettle on."

Nick looks up from the TV. Harry's standing in the doorway, looking hungover. 

"Hi," Nick says. "What are you doing here?"

"Hi," Harry says. "I just thought if we were going to have an argument about who kissed who, we should do it face to face."

"You look terrible," Nick says, for want of something better to say.

"I'm dying," Harry agrees. "I had to pull over three times to throw up."

"Are you ill?"

"I'm hungover," Harry says. 

"But you never get hungover."

Harry makes a face and gingerly sits down on the sofa. "I mostly finished the tequila. Then I started on the vodka."

"Hardcore," Nick says. "For the record, I kissed you. You kiss everyone, but you don't kiss me. That's how it works."

Harry looks at him, brow furrowed. "What?"

"You kiss everyone in the world but me, which is unfair because I reckon I want to kiss you approximately ten million times more than all of those people put together, and I pretend that I'm okay with the fact that you don't want me back, and then we end up in this situation because I've accidentally given in and snogged you first thing in the morning."

"Right," Nick's mum says, coming in with the tea. "Let's pretend I never heard that. I'll just turn the iron off and then I'll be upstairs. Loudly folding sheets."

"Mum—"

"I never heard anything," Eileen says, already halfway up the stairs. "If your dad comes home, send him up, will you?"

Harry is still looking at Nick like he's stupid. "But I love you," he says. "Everyone knows that."

"I don't," Nick says. "I love you, but you don't love me back. I know that."

Harry puts his face in his hands. "Can we—" he says. His voice is muffled. "God, okay. I love you, and I thought you knew and were being kind to me because you don't love me back. You've never shown any indication that you wanted me to kiss you."

"Oh," Nick says. "I want to kiss you all the time. I thought you wanted everyone else but me."

"Right," Harry says. "I'm really tired. What happens now?"

"I don't know."

"For fuck's sake," Jane says, coming in. "Were you two both dropped on your head as children, or what? It's _painful_ , listening to this. Mum's about ready to throw herself off the landing. How is it possible that you're both so thick? Harry, Nick's in love with you. Everyone in the world knows this, because my little brother is crap at hiding anything when it comes to you. Nick, Harry's very clearly said that he's in love with you, but you seem incapable of dealing with simple human emotion." She looks at them both. "Oh my god. In conclusion, you love each other. Just, like, I don't know. Hold hands or something. I'd say kiss but if Harry's thrown up three times it suddenly stops being romantic."

"Um," Nick says. 

"Don't say a word," Jane says. "This is what got you both into this mess. Harry, are you in love with my brother? Nod or shake your head. No words." 

Harry nods. 

"Marvellous. Nick, are you in love with Harry? Stop trying to talk. Nod your head."

Nick nods.

"Great, this is wonderful. This is what evolution is all about. Do you want to go out with each other? Nod for yes."

Nick blushes. He's waiting for Harry to nod first, but Harry's red-faced too. 

"Jesus. Just fucking nod, okay. Sorry, Mum," she calls up the stairs. "You'd be swearing if you had to deal with two emotional idiots too."

Harry's hand touches Nick's. Nick's little finger twitches. 

" _Nod_ ," Jane says. 

Nick nods, and Harry nods, and Jane rolls her eyes. 

"Lift off," she says. "Now you're going out, and it's official, and you're both idiots. Drink your tea. I'm off to help mum with the sheets."

It's another minute before Nick can build up the courage to look at Harry.

"So," he says. 

"I don't feel very well," Harry says miserably. He shuffles a bit closer.

"Are you going to throw up?" Nick asks, a little carefully. He holds his arm out and Harry sneaks into the gap along his side, resting his cheek against Nick's shoulder. 

"Might do," Harry says. "Are you going to hold my hair back?"

"If you ask me nicely enough."

Harry snuggles into his side. "Sorry," he says. "For being an idiot."

Nick wraps an arm around Harry's shoulders. "Yeah," he says. "Me too."

\--//--

That night they sleep wrapped up in each other in Nick's tiny single bed upstairs. 

"Is it going to mess everything up if we kiss again?" Harry asks, once the lights are turned off and the duvet's pulled up over their shoulders. 

"Dunno," Nick says. "It better bloody not do."

Harry smiles, curls his fingers into Nick's hair, and pulls him in for a kiss.


End file.
